Flanked by officiants of the Ecumenical Catholic Church and local parishioners, activists seeking to reopen the shuttered St. Francis by the Sea Church met Friday to elect an executive board and appoint an interim bishop to again open the historic church's doors to public services.

Paul Merritt was elected president; William Kelly, vice president; and Jessica DeStefano, secretary-treasurer.

Named interim bishop was Bishop Peter Hickman, who serves as presiding bishop of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion and pastor at St. Matthew Ecumenical Catholic Church in Orange. The unanimous vote was cast by 33 congregants, 32 of them by proxy.

"Now we are in a solid position to regain the church for the congregants," Merritt said.

The tiny facility at 430 Park Ave., Laguna Beach, built from rubble gathered from the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, is occupied by a parish of the American Catholic Church in California, a liberal wing of Catholicism that permits priests to marry and inducts women as pastors and bishops.

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The cathedral itself is nestled among buildings at St. Mary's Episcopal Church and was designed by a former Episcopal priest, Percy Wise Clarkson, combining elements of Byzantine, Gothic and Craftsman styles, according to local historian Anne Frank, who petitioned to have the structure placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the mid-1980s. It is one of two sites on the National Register in Laguna Beach; the other is Rockledge, the sprawling ocean-view complex built in the 1920s.

It gained national notoriety in 1984, when the Guinness Book of World Records proclaimed it the "world's smallest cathedral."

St. Francis by the Sea is considered unique, due to its eclectic décor and use of religious symbols and icons from Christianity, Catholicism, Eastern religions and Theosophy, hearkening to its origins as an alternative religious organization, according to Frank's petition.

It is named for St. Francis of Assisi. The current congregation adheres more formally to Catholicism but eschews the doctrine of papal infallibility and does not adhere to Vatican orders, according to church officiants.

The 1,000-square-foot structure has few pews but a devoted following who became alarmed when Sunday services became sporadic about a year ago and then were terminated several months ago when longtime Bishop Simon Talarczyk apparently became unable to perform them.

Talarczyk had led the church for 38 years. No new bishop stepped in to take his place.